Everyone is Psychic

By Elizabeth Fuller

A simple step by step guide for developing your psychic ability to achieve a richer, more creative life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483539034

Elizabeth Fuller

Writers in collaboration. Conrad Bishop & Elizabeth Fuller were co-founders of Milwaukee’s Theatre X in 1969 and The Independent Eye in 1974. They have written over 60 produced plays, staged by Actors Theatre of Louisville, Circle Repertory, Mark Taper Forum, Denver Center Theatre, Barter Theatre, Asolo Theater Center, and many others, as well as by their own ensembles. They were twice recipients of playwriting fellowships from the NEA and six-time fellowship grantees of PA Council on the Arts. They have created work in collaboration with many theatres and colleges. They have written and produced six public radio series, broadcast on more than 80 stations, and were recipients of two Silver Reel Awards from the National Association of Community Broadcasters.Bishop has a Stanford Ph.D. and has directed over 100 shows for the Eye and Theatre X as well as freelancing with regional theatres and colleges. He has also done extensive mask and puppet design, and has performed with the Eye throughout the USA.Fuller has created more than 50 theatre scores, including music for The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Macbeth, Frankenstein, and Camino Real. She was twice recipient of Philadelphia’s Barrymore Award for theatre music. She has performed roles with Independent Eye for three decades, plus many guest roles.

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Introduction

The wind was whipping in off the stormy Atlantic when I arrived at a beach-front hotel in Virginia Beach. It was nearly midnight on a raw March evening in 1987.1 had left Westport, Connecticut, that morning for a ten-hour train ride. Physically I felt as if I had dismounted from the Dead Gulch Stage Coach. Mentally I was buoyed by the prospects that lay ahead.

As the taxi driver handed me my change, he asked what in the world I was doing in Virginia Beach this chilled time of the year. I told him that I was here to research the work of Edgar Cayce at the headquarters down the road. The driver shrugged his shoulders New York style and said, I should have known. In the last year I’ve taken more people to that Cayce place than anywhere else. Then he looked at his meter and called out the window, One day I’m going to go over there and check out that Cayce guy!

What about this man Cayce? The New York Times, one of the world’s more cautious publications, discovered Cayce back in October 1910. The headline read: ILLITERATE MAN BECOMES DOCTOR WHEN HYPNOTIZED. Subheads went on to say: Psychic Diagnoses and Cures Patients. Ignorant of Medicine, He Turns Healer in Trance . . . Strange Power Shown by Edgar Cayce Puzzles Physicians . . . Physician Says Kentucky Man Has Wonderful Powers . . . Remarkable and Successful Treatments Are Sworn To in Affadavits . . . Psychic Power New to Medical World . . .

This was only the beginning. Edgar Cayce’s paranormal powers were not limited to the medical. The scope of his cosmic treasury was as boundless as the universe he examined and interpreted. While in a trance state he provided penetrating insights into the mysteries of the body, mind, and soul.

By 1930, Edgar Cayce was the Western world’s answer to the gurus of the East. Dubbed by the media The Sleeping Prophet, he lay on a couch and allowed himself to be put in a trance. People seeking help from serious illness, deep emotional or mental disturbances, or everyday frustrations wrote him. Their questions were read to Cayce while he was in an altered state of consciousness. All he needed to know was the name and address of the inquirer. Then he announced, Yes, we have the body here.

In a strange, inexplicable way he visualized the disorder. Then he diagnosed and prescribed treatments in detail. Often Cayce felt the presence of the distant person so vividly that he could describe everything from what the person was wearing to his activities, from brushing his teeth to tying his shoelaces.

If Cayce were dealing with a medical case, he displayed vast knowledge of medical science, although he had received no formal education beyond the sixth grade. To the conventional medical mind this seemed almost impossible. As one irritated doctor put it: Why the hell should I spend all these years in medical school if some illiterate can lie on his couch with his eyes closed and prescribe better than I or any other trained doctor? Yet this elementary-school dropout repeatedly proved from the early 1900s until his death in 1945 that he could perform wonders.

All this was accomplished during times when people considered the psychic to be very low-grade merchandise. This is not to say that there was any great heightened awareness when I was growing up in the fifties in Cleveland Heights. Emblazoned on my memory was the time Aunt Betty blurted out at dinner that she had seen the angels take her grandmother away. It was hard to discern how far the eyeballs around the table rolled back in their sockets. My uncle Bud, a U.S. marshal, mumbled something about bringing out the handcuffs. My father snapped, Get the net! My cousins and brother whooped, booed, and hooted.

I thought back on this family scene as I checked into the hotel in Virginia Beach. A pleasant young man with a soft Southern drawl handed me my room key along with an envelope. Inside was a note from Charles Thomas Cayce, Edgar Cayce’s grandson, the president of the Association for Research and Enlightenment, an organization formed to carry out his grandfather’s life, work, and principles. The note read:

Dear Elizabeth:

We are enthusiastic about the plans for your new book on my grandfather. As I mentioned to you on the phone, people everywhere have written us that they have felt personal signs of incipient psychic ability that seem to arise spontaneously. They are eager to understand and develop this. Since my grandfather has spoken at length on this subject, I’m sure such a book as you propose will be important and widely helpful. We will be glad to assist you in every way.

Also in the envelope was a detailed agenda for my visit. It was packed with a schedule of lunches, meetings, lectures, and dinners. The next evening, in fact, I would be having dinner at Charles Thomas’s home. Such gracious cooperation was welcome. For me to interpret the impressive background material on Edgar Cayce’s methods for developing psychic ability, I would need expert guidance, which grandson Charles Thomas was soon to provide.

The morning after my arrival, I got up rested and refreshed. After I checked my tape recorder and made a few notes, I went down to the hotel dining room, which overlooked the Atlantic. There was a heavy spray whipping off the top of the breakers, adding to the mystical atmosphere. As I ate breakfast, I tried to imagine Virginia Beach back in the 1930s and ’40s when Edgar Cayce was giving psychic readings in a building across the street from where I was seated. Although Cayce had been dead for over forty years, I couldn’t shake the feeling that his presence permeated the surroundings. Perhaps it was just the anticipation of what I was to discover in my quest. Or perhaps it was because in the previous month I had read all I could about Cayce and was steeped in wonderment.

Bending against the March wind, I made my way across broad Atlantic Avenue and down a dozen or so blocks to the Association for Research and Enlightenment, known as the A.R.E. My first scheduled appointment was a nine o’clock meeting with Charles Thomas Cayce.

The Cayce complex is impressive. There are two buildings within a hundred yards of each other. The new one is clean, white, and contemporary. The other structure sits behind it on a hill with a sweeping view of the Atlantic. It’s an older, rambling white frame building that looks more like a gracious country estate than the former hospital where Cayce’s treatments had been administered in earlier years. Today, however, it houses offices for the A.R.E.

My meeting was in the modern building. It contains the expansive library, two auditoriums, staff offices, and two serene meditation rooms. The lobby is on the first floor. On the left is a portrait of Edgar Cayce with his wife, Gertrude. Beneath the painting is a slide projector that gives a minipresentation of the life and work of Edgar Cayce. I was a few minutes early, so I sat and watched the capsule version of his life.

I had forgotten that when Edgar Cayce was a small child he was able to see his dead relatives. He also had the uncanny ability to fall asleep with a schoolbook under his head and awake with perfect recall of the text without having even opened the book. This was somewhat disconcerting for his parents, church-going folks who lived on a small farm in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, at the turn of the century. These were the first signs of his burgeoning psychic ability that would later startle the world.

Charles Thomas was not at all how I had imagined he would be. I had read so much about his grandfather that I had just assumed he might radiate some of the homespun flavor of his grandfather, but there was none I could detect. Charles Thomas is tall, distinguished, and a boyish forty- five. He spoke with the fluency of a college professor and the warmth of an old friend.

Liz, he said as he greeted me at the door of his office, we’re all enthusiastic about your book project!

I told him that I felt privileged to work on a book that would put Edgar Cayce’s profound insights on psychic development to practical use. I also told Charles Thomas that the anticipation of entering into the vast Cayce archives made me feel as if I was about to plunge into a metaphysical whirlpool that would relax and stimulate at the same time.

Charles Thomas smiled and said, I think my grandfather might have thought of the Atlantic Ocean across the street as a metaphysical whirlpool.

Charles Thomas spoke casually about the thousands of A.R.E. members who had joined because their own formerly hidden psychic tendencies had emerged without warning.

This happens to an unusually large percentage of people, he said as he leaned back in a heavy leather chair. Small signs appear spontaneously: sharp hunches or intuitions that turn out to be surprisingly accurate.

Charles Thomas ruffled through a stack of mail on his oak desk. Here’s a recent survey that points up the current wide-spread belief in the paranormal, he said. He passed the survey to me.

The survey was conducted by Father Andrew Greeley of the University Of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Although Father Greeley is a Catholic priest and sociologist, he is best known as a popular novelist. Based on a sampling of 1,470 people, the poll concluded that 67 percent of Americans now profess a belief in the supernatural. This is up from 58 percent in 1973. Twenty-nine percent believe in reincarnation or have had a psychic experience. And 42 percent believe they have been in communication with someone deceased.

I told Charles Thomas that I was surprised the statistics were so high. He said that he was a bit surprised too. But then he went on to say that after Shirley MacLaine’s television miniseries depicted her own psychic experiences, the A.R.E. was bombarded with inquiries. Membership went up by one-third in a single month. He said that he felt this increase resulted from people who saw the TV series and suddenly realized they weren’t alone with their paranormal experiences.

You must occasionally get letters from loonies who say they’re hearing voices telling them to do something, I said.

Oh sure, Charles Thomas said. But we’re not trying to play psychiatrist. We just present Edgar Cayce’s deep conviction: Turn yourself over to the Creative Source that put us here in the first place. Anyone might be helped.

Do people send in letters even if they haven’t had any psychic experiences?

Yes, plenty of them. But most write because they or people close to them have had surprising psychic experiences. They’re interested in further understanding these happenings.

I told him about my husband, John, who as a journalist became very interested in the whole paranormal field and has written several books on it. But on a personal level he doesn’t seem to allow himself to have a direct experience. In fact, he boasts that he’s so bad at seeing the future that in 1940 he bet ten dollars that there would never be network TV. In 1950 he bet another ten bucks that there would never be color TV. In 1960 he bet twenty-five that a man would never walk on the moon.

Maybe John didn’t want to run Jeanne Dixon out of town, Charles Thomas said with an engaging half-smile. Then he added, Actually I can relate to John.

How do you mean? I asked.

For a long time I resisted allowing myself to experience anything that might be termed ‘psychic.’ Just as John probably doesn’t like to take off his investigative journalist’s hat, I didn’t want to remove my psychologist’s hat. Because of your grandfather? I asked.

That’s probably the main reason. I remember as a kid I was bodysurfing down at the beach with a bunch of neighborhood kids. They began taunting me, saying things like, ‘Your father works at the Spook House on the hill.’ That had a big impact on me.

I interrupted to say: So instead of joining the ‘house on the hill’ you opted to become a child psychologist?

Exactly.

How did you finally become involved in the A.R.E.? I asked.

I began working as a child psychologist at the A.R.E. children’s camp. Shortly after that, I began to study Edgar Cayce’s readings on children. And from there I began working with children who had psychic ability. Then in 1970 I took over the president’s job from my father, Hugh Lynn Cayce. He had had a heart attack and had to shift responsibilities.

When Charles Thomas mentioned that he had worked with children who had psychic ability, I recalled an interesting case he had written about in the A.R.E. monthly magazine, Venture Inward. In his column, President’s Message, Charles Thomas wrote about a young girl whom he had met while he was the head of the youth activities program. Phyllis was a fourteen-year-old child who showed extraordinary psychic ability. I asked Charles Thomas about her. He went on to say:

"Phyllis came to my attention because her junior high school teacher and her parents were concerned. Her father, indeed, was quite angry, because Phyllis insisted that she had a playmate named Phil whom no one else could see. Children frequently talk about imaginary playmates, but seldom after they reach the age of fourteen. It’s not surprising that her family was alarmed.

"Phyllis told me that her imaginary playmate, Phil, had died suddenly, not long before she became acquainted with him. He refused to tell her where he had died or his last name. I asked if I might speak with Phil. She thought for a moment and said no. But later she said that if I wanted to question Phil, she would relay my questions to him and tell me his answers.

"As a result, I conducted an experiment. I went down the hall to another office, opened a book, and left it open on a desk while I returned to the room where Phyllis waited. I suggested that she ask Phil the page number that showed on the open book. She paused, then said a number. I returned to the other room and confirmed that the number she gave was correct.

We repeated the experiment a dozen times with different pages open. I even laid the book upside down so no one could see the page at which it was open. Phyllis—or Phil—was correct every time.

Charles Thomas continued, I was never able to determine clearly whether Phil was a discarnate entity or simply a symbol for Phyllis’s own psychic ability. But the experience showed me some ways in which we might help children who have such extraordinary experiences. Mind if I ask a personal question? I said.

Depends on how personal, Charles Thomas answered with a chuckle.

Do you have any of your grandfather’s special powers?

If you mean can I lie on a sofa and give a trance reading for a little old lady in Keokuk, Iowa, no. But I use my psychic ability for other things.

For instance?

Let’s see, Charles Thomas began, just the other night I had been talking to my wife about a recurring dream. It turned out that the dream was able to provide valuable insight into our relationship.

In what way? I asked.

Well, the dream was a way of opening up discussion about a particular situation that we hadn’t even been consciously aware of. Once we were made aware of it, we could deal with it effectively.

Charles Thomas went on to say that in addition to dreams, he uses daily meditation.

Meditation is the greatest way to open your psychic channel. As my grandfather said, ‘It is listening to the Divine within.’

At this point Charles Thomas told a whimsical but practical way that meditation had come in handy only weeks earlier. He had been at home packing for a weekend seminar when he suddenly realized that all of his slacks were at the dry cleaner. His wife, Leslie, told him to pick them up on the way to the airport. But when he got to the dry cleaner he was informed that he needed his ticket. The cleaners had just modernized their system and a ticket number was the only way to locate his slacks. At first, Charles Thomas said, he panicked. But then he went to a quiet corner and meditated on the number. A few moments later he said to the clerk, Try number 177. Within second he was handed his slacks.

Did you mention to the clerk how you came up with the number? I asked.

When you have the last name of Cayce, you don’t want to push it! He laughed, then went on, I think that at least every week we use health suggestions in our family. This isn’t very dramatic, but about a month ago my daughter got a plantar wart on her foot, and we rubbed Edgar Cayce’s home remedy of castor oil and baking soda on it.

And it went away? I asked.

It did, he said, adding, during the treatment we kept reminding her to refer to it not as ‘her wart’ but as ‘the wart.’

Is that because of Cayce’s theory that the mind can affect the body?

Right. Cayce’s approach to health was pretty basic. In all of the readings he gave on the subject of illness, he stressed the importance of finding the root cause, not simply alleviating the symptom.

You must get a lot of feedback on how others are helped.

Charles Thomas replied, I’m constantly pleased at how many tell us that they feel their lives change dramatically after studying the Cayce material.

In what way? I asked.

Many report that they begin to function on a higher level. Things that used to clutter their lives no longer get in the way. At this higher level of awareness there is a deeper understanding of life and its true purpose. This helps bring an inner peace. Then he added an afterthought, "They